The 2017 NHL Trade Deadline passed at 2 pm CST today with no trades made from the Wild. The team assessed their current talent and decided that the one big trade from this weekend was enough. So it was decided that not making a trade today was the strongest move they could have made.
Minnesota Wild
The 2017 NHL Trade Deadline has come and gone. A few big deals were made today, but the Minnesota Wild were not one of the teams involved. The Wild did not even make a smaller minor league level deal as it seemed that they had done all their dealing over the weekend and were just plain done with the moves they wanted to make.
It wasn’t hard to see this result. Although there always was a chance the Wild could have made another deal, it just didn’t seem likely considering the emphasis of their GM Chuck Fletcher and Head Coach Bruce Boudreau on how much they really liked the group they had now.
Fletcher was insistent in the lead up to the deadline that the team was not interested in taking pieces out of team. He told Michael Russo of the Star Tribune that “I want to add to our depth, not take away from it, so I don’t think we’d be cutting out any core pieces at this point.” That statement proved to be face value as the Wild GM stuck to that mantra not sending away a single piece of his current NHL level stable.
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The Hanzal/White trade was done with draft picks which allowed Fletcher to keep all the players he currently had. Sure it was a high price to pay in draft picks, but with the retained salary on Hanzal’s contract the effect on the immediate future of the Wild to help the results of this season with no subtractions of depth or sacrifice of cap maneuvering room.
A concern is out there that the Wild did sacrifice too many draft picks, and on the surface it’s certainly valid. However, I’d argue that the current crop of already drafted prospects is deep and reduces the need to restock the cabinet in this next draft. Add to that the reports that this year’s draft class looks to be a bit weak and you can see where the Wild are able to part with some of those picks without damage to their longer-term plans.
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Sure there are impending offseason issues that a trade now could have fixed, but Fletcher was concerned with the effect on the current team so he decided to table those issues for now. When the team is in the mindset that the Wild are in now, that’s a good strategy because simply the clearing of cap space to sign Niederreiter, Granlund, and Haula can wait till the offseason and might be done even more effectively then.
This deadline is a good news story for the Wild. They have successfully added to the depth and talent of their conference leading team without taking any pieces, and the prospects in their system are still intact.
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That’s a win, and it seems that the pieces brought in are already helping the Wild to gain some more points and weather the storm of injuries/the mumps. It’s telling that the Wild have been without Parise and Pominville for the last 2 games, but they’ve still one both of those games and Hanzal and White are big contributors to those wins. The team is in place all that’s left is for them to go out and take it.